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What do political scientist Norm Ornstein, the Pew Study and the American Civil War have to do with one another? I can’t speak to their relationships in the real world, but I would like to share some thoughts about they have started to link up in my mind.

Ornstein, author of It’s Even Worse Than It Looks: How the American Constitutional System Collided With the New Politics of Extremism, has been speaking recently about a phenomenon he calls “tribalism”. There are many aspects to his analysis, but at its core he defines the situation as one where people start to care more about who is making the argument than about the content of the argument. Politicians switch positions on issues depending on which party or which leader has made the proposal. Tribalism makes compromise nearly impossible – because while it’s conceivable to find middle ground on an issue there is no middle ground on identity.

It has occurred to me that this type of tribalism is a feature of the modern world that is by no means restricted to Washington. The Pew Study is the most recent effort to slice and dice the American Jewish community and discern its subgroups. I am aware of the controversy over the methodologies of the studies but I don’t think anyone would deny that differences within our community sometimes impede our collective well-being. There are real disagreements about matters of policy, but I am often struck by the fact that the fiercest struggles are matters of identity. At a recent forum it happened that a panel was introduced only by their names. About midway through the policy discussion, a clearly distressed audience member raised her hand and said “we all have prejudices, tell us something about who you are so we will know your prejudices.” The single item I found most striking in the Pew Study was that when the questions weren’t about labels or rituals, but instead about values – there was a surprising level of commonality across all groups. I manage a museum, so I have a vested interest in the preservation of the inanimate objects we imbue with meaning (what flags we fly, how we dress, what we use to worship), but I find myself wondering whether we sometimes put so much value in the distinctive aspects of our material culture that we lose sight of the human bonds that tie us all together.

And this takes me to the topic of the Civil War. When Ornstein was recently asked if this is the worst state that Congress has ever been in, he conceded that it was worse in the years immediately prior to the Civil War…but added, who wants to use that as a standard of comparison? Our current exhibit points out that the war not only divided the Union but exacerbated divisions within the Jewish community. As “who” became more important than “what”, factions became irreconcilable. In many cases people stopped talking to their neighbors and shut themselves off from alternate points of view. In the echo chambers that emerged, progressively more radical solutions started to seem normal. Families and congregations were split forever.

I think that identity is a basic human need, and that museums like JMM perform a public service by expanding understanding of elements of both our common identity and of the distinctive sub-segments of the Jewish experience. However, I hope we always keep in mind that identity should not be a wall but a window, something that draws us into new worlds and helps us reexamine our own assumptions.

A blog post by executive director Marvin Pinkert. To read more posts by Marvin, click HERE.